Shrinking Cities

A friend of mine from the Urban Planning program passed along a hot tip - namely the Shrinking Cities exhibition in Detroit. Cranbrook Art Museum and MOCAD are hosting the event. Here is how they describe it,

Cranbrook Art Museum will host part one of the exhibition entitled Shrinking Cities: International Research, which examines the phenomenon of urban decline in the four focus cities: Detroit, Halle/Leipzig (Germany), Manchester/Liverpool (Britain), and Ivanovo (Russia). These cities are explored and represented in diverse forms of documentation by artists, architects, researchers and others. Themes include a worldwide study of urban depopulation, the change of urban landscapes, everyday practices and political conflicts under the conditions of decline.

MOCAD will host part two of the exhibition entitled Shrinking Cities: Interventions, which presents strategies for change and action. It is divided into five areas: Negotiating Inequality, Self-Governance, Creating Images, Organizing Retreat, and Occupying Space. The artists see the four depopulated cities in question as offering opportunity, a blank slate or canvas for developing news ways of living and working.

Read more about this exhibition or the whole shrinkingcities project online.